English Whisky
Scotland and England are two different countries: Mix them up at your own peril. Similarly, Scotch whisky and English whisky are different animals. To be sure, there’s far more whisky in Scotland than England, and the whisky being produced to the south has little of the acclaim of its Scottish brethren. Production of whisky in England ended in the early 1900s, and it wasn’t until 2013 when production began again. Today less than a dozen distilleries are operating in England, nearly all producing whisky in the single malt or blended malt style (some of which is peated).
Top English Whisky Posts:
Lakes Distillery Steel Bonnets Blended Malt Whisky
Cotswolds Single Malt Whiskey
The English Whisky Co. Classic and Peated Single Malts
Bimber is an ambitious craft distillery that’s fairly new to the UK whisky scene. Their founder, Dariusz Plazewski, established the distillery in an industrial corner of West London in 2015 and named it for the Polish word for moonshine. Bimber’s single malts are true grain-to-glass offerings, relying on traditional floor-malted, hand-mashed barley sourced from a…
Read MoreMade by the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery, Filey Bay is the first single malt whisky made in, “and of,” Yorkshire, England. The distillery says this because it’s a true “field to bottle” operation, made with local malt, pot distilled, and aged on site. Filey Bay has a rather extreme finishing operation, with over a half…
Read MoreOne whisky a day pulled from an Advent calendar during December? Well that’s one way to make the holidays go by more quickly, if that’s your jam. You’ll find lots of these kits to choose from during the season, with offerings generally ranging from 12 to 25 small whisky samples designed to be parsed out…
Read MoreWhen I visited Virginia Distillery Co. last year, I got the chance to sample the inaugural bottling of their Journey Cask Collection, a series of single cask single malts from all over the world that pays homage to the many whisky-makers that inspired and influenced Virginia Distillery Co.’s founder Dr. George G. Moore. That first…
Read MoreDeja vu? You bet. We encountered Cotswolds Single Malt — part of the tiny English whisky industry — only last year, and now the distillery is out with a new release of the same expression. Why are we reviewing this again? The bottles may look almost identical but the barley used in this spirit is…
Read MoreLakes Distillery is England’s largest whisky distillery, located a few miles south of the Scottish border. Steel Bonnets is the world’s first blend of single malt Scottish whisky and single malt English whisky, naturally using the Lakes Distillery’s own single malt. The region has always been a fairly lawless part of the UK, with marauding…
Read MoreCotswolds is an area in southern England, and while one might think this is gin country, a distillery has popped up (in 2014) that is also producing single malt whisky. Says the distillery, “The first whisky ever distilled in the Cotswolds, it uses 100% locally grown, floor-malted barley and has been aged in first-fill ex-Bourbon barrels…
Read MoreSingle malt whisky: It’s not just for Scotland any more. The English Whisky Company makes Scotch-style whisky in Norfolk County in good old England. And why not? Located further south, the company says it’s warmer and drier there, which means these single malts mature more quickly. The English Whisky Co. — aka St. George’s Distillery,…
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